Singer-songwriter Raveena turns heartache, pain into...

Raveena’s sense of solidarity with women of color is key to her music.

Photo: Harshvardhan Shah

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Raveena will make a stop at S.F.’s Cafe du Nord on her first headlining tour.

Photo: Harshvardhan Shah

Even in her darkest moments, Raveena Aurora manages to exude a warm glow. On her 2016 track, “Johnny It’s the Last Time,” the 24-year-old New York R&B singer recalls a violent story over an infectiously bouncy beat, with lyrics about getting black-and-blue eyes from a lover or that time “when I cracked your Rolex/ You went and grabbed my throat.”

The buoyant production that layers this all-too scary domestic violence scene might feel like a mismatched contrast, but for the Indian American songwriter, who goes simply by Raveena, music is a sanctuary of empowerment amid any past pain.

“It’s really been like the safest and most positive space for me — a space for me to be my most carefree and loving self,” she says by phone from New York, where she’s preparing to embark on her first headlining tour that includes a San Francisco stop at Cafe du Nord on Sunday, July 29. “It really has a very healing presence. That’s the kind of energy I want to impart.”

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Indeed, that feeling is distinctly present in her music. On Raveena’s latest single, “Honey,” off her debut EP titled “Shanti” released in December, she brushes a delicate, airy voice — reminiscent of Corinne Bailey Rae, whom she counts as an influence, along with singers from Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday to Sade — over honeyed soul tracks. The result is a smooth sound that has garnered fans like SZA and Jorja Smith, and more importantly provided some healing reflection for her life.

“My music took so long to come to where it is because it took me a long time to come to a comfort level with all the pain of what I’ve experienced and to a kind of strength and sense of peace from it,” Raveena says.

In the alluring track “Sweet Time,” she sings, “I’m finally fine now” — a revelation, she admits, she’s worked toward in just the past couple of years.

In this context, “Shanti” appears as a clear-eyed rejoicing in a journey past trauma. Following its standout track “If Only,” where she shares the heartache of moving on from a toxic partner, the rest of the EP grooves to a newfound sense of life and love.

Raveena is wary of providing too much detail about these moments of her life — they are parts of her that feel private and sacred, she says — but believes “to say it broadly, I think a lot of women could really relate to what I’ve been through, and it touches on a lot of painful things that women go through.”

This sense of solidarity with women, and women of color specifically, is central to her music.

“When I was younger, I didn’t have that community to hold me that was so positive and so embracing of your identity,” she says. “I’ve definitely experienced my fair share of racism and misogyny in my life, and I think — I know — those things happen almost tenfold for women of color in this country.”

Creating that community of support that she lacked when she was growing up is essential to her now as an adult and South Asian American artist. In the music video for “Sweet Time,” which Raveena directed, she basks among a palette of diverse women, carefree in a montage of unified beauty and strength.

“I think there is a real shift happening,” she says. “And it’s a shift happening where I feel like those women of color are just being completely who they are and doing it independent and saying what they want to say.”

Raveena refers to this moment as a “second wave,” predated by earlier trailblazers like the Sri Lankan-British rapper M.I.A.

The true shape of that wave, though, is still hard to make out. As groundbreaking as Raveena might appear in her own way, it was only recently that she quit a day job and felt financially capable of living off her music. She’s working on a new project with her longtime producer Everett Orr that she says will be sonically different — and “may or may not be longer than ‘Shanti.’ ”

The independent singer is also open to collaborate with bigger stars, though she admits she’s cautious about working with the more corporate side of the music industry.

“If I’m going to be preaching for equality and empowerment of women so much in my music, I have to have the same on the business end of things,” Raveena says.

Her ultimate goal is to ensure that diversity in music isn’t just a blip on the airwaves.

“There just should be more space for people who look like me,” she says. “I know there are a lot of people who are making music who are South Asian and doing their thing. If I can just make more space for that, that makes me feel very happy, like I’m doing something of purpose.”